1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facsimile or telephone including a central processing unit, and in particular, to a method for predicting a telephone number to be dialed based on a number corresponding to a dial key depressed by a user, to automatically dial remaining numbers for the telephone number.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, the use of a facsimile has gone from being widely used in an office to being widely used in the home. Further, a multifunction telephone including a central processing unit (CPU) is also widely used. In general, such a facsimile, or telephone, has a speed dialing function to allow a user to conveniently dial certain telephone numbers. The facsimile, or telephone, having the speed dialing function includes separate speed dial keys. A user stores, or registers, a plurality of telephone numbers in separate memory areas corresponding to the respective speed dial keys according to a speed dialing procedure programmed into the facsimile, or telephone. Thereafter, when dialing the stored telephone number, the user depresses the speed dial key corresponding to the telephone number that he desires to dial, to automatically and quickly dial the desired telephone number. There are a number of known automatic dialing methods as exemplified by the following U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,392 to Noriko Norimatsu entitled Dialing Apparatus For Displaying Stored Character With Reduced Key Operations; U.S. Pat. No. 5,483,591 to Noriko Koma entitled Apparatus For Referring To A Content Of A Dial Memory In A Telephone Set; U.S. Pat. No. 5,509,067 to Yukio Murata entitled Method And Apparatus For Speed Dialing Via One-Touch And Two-Touch Operation; U.S. Pat. No. 5,541,988 to Georgi H. Draganoff entitled Telephone Dialler With A Personalized Page Organization Of Telephone Directory Memory; U.S. Pat. No. 5,568,546 to David J. Marutiak entitled Method And Apparatus For Dynamic Abbreviated Dialing Assignment; U.S. Pat. No.5,592,546 to Kouichi Takahashi entitled Memory Dialing Control System Having Improved Telephone Number Retrieval Function By Using History Information; U.S. Pat. No.5,636,270 to Melville G. Davey entitled Method Of Producing Signals Commonly Used With Telephones; U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,633 to James C. Kaufeld et al. entitled Automatic Telephone Dialer System; U.S. Pat. No. 5,677,949 to James Joseph Macor entitled Telephone With Minimal Switches For Dialing; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,677,950 to Henry Todd Brendzel entitled Telephone With Dial History Access.
The number of the telephone numbers that can be stored in memory, however, is limited according to the number of the speed dial keys that is available on the facsimile, or telephone. Further, a user needs to remember the corresponding speed dial key whenever dialing a specified telephone number. In addition, the user should remove an infrequently dialed telephone number from a stored list of telephone numbers and add a more frequently dialed telephone number to the list, whenever necessary.